I Am Not A Number
by Red Bess Rackham
Summary: Two is playing mindgames - or is he? Six struggles to keep his grip on reality, especially when he's not sure which reality is real. (Alternate series ending; Oneshot.)


**Disclaimer:** For fun only. No copyrights do I possess.

**A/n:** The plot bunny for this came fast and poured out while I was in the middle of watching _The Prisoner_ for the first time. I stalled in the middle of the fic because then I finished the series and my ending did not match up even kind of. Upon recent rewatch of the series, however, I was re-inspired and finished it off. So it takes things in a different direction, starting at no specific point in the middle of the series and going from there. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy! _(Also posted to AO3.)_

* * *

**I Am Not A Number**

"I'm not a number." He says, for what feels like the hundred-thousandth time (maybe it is). "I'm not a number, I'm a person."

"Of course you're a person. We're all people, Six." The man smiles. Perhaps it is supposed to be warm and kindly, but it comes across sinister and unfriendly.

He clenches his jaw so hard it hurts and he snaps, "My name is not Six."

And he knows this – _knows_ it. Knows it like he knows the sky is blue, that he is a man with gray-green eyes. Knows it like having skin over his bones or air in his lungs. It is deep, a fact ingrained within and unable to be removed.

The man in the white suit, called Two, is still smiling maddeningly. In a tone one part patience and two parts condescension, he asks, "Then what is?"

Like a reflex or natural instinct, the word – the "name" – 'Six' springs to mind. He nearly blurts it out, except something is wrong. It sounds wrong, it feels wrong (_everything_ here is all wrong) but this most of all. _He is not a number, and he knows that, deep and stitched into his soul_.

He can't help feeling like somehow he has been conditioned or brainwashed; maybe they messed with his brain, with his memories. He doesn't know what they've done or how they've done it, just an unshakeable certainty that his name is _not_ Six.

But he doesn't know what it is instead.

Two leans back in his chair, chin tilted up just slightly. "Ah." It's clear he thinks he's won this round.

Six shakes his head. "I don't know. But I know that it's not Six. I _am not a number_."

"So you keep saying."

* * *

He's not defeated (he _cannot_ be), but sometimes he can't help doubting himself and this immoveable knowledge that he is someone else, supposed to be somewhere else.

Maybe he really has gone insane. Maybe he's become schizophrenic and doesn't know it. Maybe something horrible and traumatic happened, and in order to deal with it, his brain has splintered into two realities. Some nights when he's still tossing and turning, unable to sleep, he can't help but consider these possibilities, uncomfortable though they may be.

The thing he keeps coming back to, however, if he really is only dreaming, if those flashes he sees really are just a fabricated reality of an unhealthy mind, how are they so detailed? The apartment, the street, the woman. Words like New York, ocean, Statue of Liberty. Names like Lucy. Other places, things, words and so on that simply don't exist – and according to Two and the history of the Village – never have.

Six couldn't possibly have made all this up. He's not that creative.

* * *

"I want to go home."

"You can back any time you like, Six, these chats are by no means mandatory." Two pours them some tea.

"My real home. In New York."

Two sighs heavily and adds a small dollop of honey to his steaming teacup, stirring gently. "Why do you continue to insist that you are from 'somewhere else'? You must understand, Six, you _must_: there _is_ no place else."

Six doesn't respond. He watches the tendrils of steam rising from the teacup before him but refuses to reach for it. Who knows what Two put in it.

After a careful sip of tea, Two replaces the cup atop the shining white saucer. His air is that of someone addressing a particularly trying and difficult child.

"You keep having these dreams and visions, but I assure you, that is all they are. Just _dreams_."

"They're real!" Six bursts out, slamming his hand on the table and causing the cups to clatter against their saucers. "There is a whole… _world_ out there, I _know_ there is! I don't understand why you are keeping us all here – why everyone _insists_ on being so _damn brainwashed!_"

"Come, come now. No one is _brainwashed_. What kind of people do you think we are?" That kindly smile is back as Two takes another sip of tea, but Six can't stop the shiver that trickles down at his spine.

* * *

"I'm not a number."

He keeps repeating it. Over and over and over. The words have come from his mouth so many times they've almost lost all meaning; they barely sound like real words anymore.

He still can't remember his real name, but he knows he had a dog in elementary school called Leo and his tenth grade English teacher was Mr. Radisson – tall and bald with cat-like spectacles, and he always smelled like cheese. Six can't be just another number, just another pawn, another mindless zombie in this place if he remembers these things. Not if he knows who he is.

The problem, of course, is that he _doesn't_ know who he is.

* * *

Then the "chats" become mandatory after all. They come in the night and seize Six, take him up to The Clinic and lock him in a cell. He's been creating too much of a stir, he's told. He's upsetting people with all his talk of the outside world and it simply can't go on until he gets himself under control, they say.

He's dangerous, he's crazy and unstable, the people in the Village are told. He's going to be in The Clinic for an extended amount of time for treatment. He'll be out soon. They'll fix him soon. Everything will be normal again soon.

_Breathe in, breathe out, more Village._

* * *

Six thinks it's because he was close, because the things he's saying are the truth. Thinks he's been locked up because Two can't let other people know that Six has really been right all along.

Two brings him in to the darkened interrogation room where Six once had to speak with the dual therapists. The tall man in white looks terribly sad, yet there is no real sympathy in those cold eyes.

"This is for your own good, Six."

Six looks down at the straight jacket they have wrapped him up in and then back up at Two. "You can do whatever you want to me. I'll still know the truth. And I'll find a way out. Someday I will find a way out of this place, this sick little town, and I will get home."

He leans forward, eyes dark, tone menacing and furious but low and quiet. "And I will kill you."

Two shakes his head then gestures for the guards to take Six back to his room. "Until tomorrow, then, Six."

* * *

"Stop playing games."

"There is no game, Six. I am merely trying to help you – I have only _always_ been trying to help you. Surely you can see that. Surely by now, you _must_ see that."

His tone is so sincere Six almost wants to believe him. But he can't, he just _can't_. He holds as tight as he can to those blurry memories of New York, of his other life, and the certainty that he does not belong here. He didn't make them up, he couldn't have. He _couldn't_ have…

But what if this _is_ real? What if the world really did end? What if this bizarre little town where everyone is a number and everything is absurdly perfect (yet so flawed beneath the sheen of plastic smiles and muscle memory routine) is really all that there is? And _Two_ is telling the truth, has been all along?

"It's a cult," Six bursts out, for something to say and to stop his mind from reeling any further down that path. Denial is safe, denial is true (it has to be, it _has_ to be). So he finds an explanation and he stares Two down. "Somehow you kidnapped me – all these people. You brainwashed us or drugged us… This isn't it. There is a whole world out there and _somehow_ you are keeping us from going back to it. Why?"

Two meets his gaze unflinchingly. His eyes glitter and Six can't tell if it's sympathy or amusement.

"In the world you claim to remember, Six, wouldn't someone have come for you? Wouldn't someone – the police, perhaps – notice you're missing? Notice that hundreds of people are missing?"

"People disappear without a trace," Six counters. "It happens all the time, more than it ever should. Maybe this is where they went – where they were taken."

"And no one else has found this little town in the desert? No helicopters have flown over, no airplanes. No lost tourist has stumbled upon the borders of this oasis? _Ever?_ Do you see how flawed your theory is? Do you have an explanation for _that_?"

Six swallows. He casts around for the right words. _Maybe, maybe…_

After a moment, Two leans back and crosses his arms carefully over his chest. "No, I thought not." He sighs. "Six – "

"Don't call me that."

"Oh _really_, must we do this _every _time? Six is your _name_. Now, _Six_," He puts emphasis on it this time, still forcing Six to accept it. "The reason you cannot explain why no one has found this place is because there _is_ no. One. Else." The last words are biting and harsh – Two is getting tired of being nice.

Once again, everything in Six battles against Two's words. Every instinct denies it, every cell rebels, every thought turns away. _I am not a number_…

"We can't do this forever," says Two, sounding tired. "Accept your circumstances, Six. Accept that this _is_ reality."

"If I do that, you win." Six says, sharp and flat. He will never let that happen. He will never give in.

"Back to thinking this is a game." Two frowns with a hint of disgust. He stands and studies Six thoughtfully, eyes narrowing just a touch. Without a word, he leaves the room and Six is collected and taken back to his cell.

* * *

They want to break him, Six is sure of that. He will not let them.

But those chats with Two are becoming less frequent. There's no sunlight in this cell, in this building. His meal times are irregular (food on a tray shoved under the door), he no longer has any concept of time or the passage of time. They take him to the bathroom, they keep his hair cut and his face shaven, and he doesn't understand why they bother.

He will not let them break him… but after so many months, he's not sure he has a choice anymore.

* * *

"There's a barrier," says Six. "You've got some sort of barrier. It shields the town from aerial view."

"Oh," Two's eyebrows rise high on his forehead. "Are we living in a science fiction novel now?"

"People in the government are either directly involved in keeping this place a secret, or a select few have been bribed to do so. Maybe this area has been labelled as a testing zone, radioactive or something. Maybe it's all fenced off and guarded, miles from here, out of sight."

"It's rather elaborate, wouldn't you say? Government conspiracy and closing off hundreds of miles of desert, all to fool _you._" Two chuckles. "Really, Six. And you say you don't have much of an imagination."

"When the old man tried to escape, you shot him. Your people with those dogs – they chased him and killed him. That's what you do to anyone else who tries to escape, or anyone who happens to wander too close to this town. You kill them and hide the evidence before anyone knows what happens."

Two waves his hand at Six dismissively, getting to his feet. "I don't have the patience to listen to this today."

"It's because I'm right, isn't it?!" Six shouts, hope and triumph building inside – foreign feelings after _so_ long in that cell, in this place, this damn Village.

Two looks down at his prisoner. "It's because one can only hear so much insane drivel from a delusional man before he grows quite weary of it. It _would_ be easier to kill you and be done with it."

Six's heart drops. He can't say he didn't expect this would happen eventually.

But then Two smiles. "Were I the kind of man you seem to believe I am, that is."

* * *

"My name is not Six."

He is exhausted, sad, hopeless and says the words with barely any conviction at all. He can tell Two is far too pleased to see the fight has finally gone out of him, but he is adept at masking it.

Six tried to keep fighting. Tried and tried and _tried_. After eleven months of fighting, struggling, being trapped and forced, confined and suspected, rewarded and punished, given "treatments", locked up, hit over the head, drugged, manipulated, coerced, praised, insulted; after struggling, hallucinating, running, screaming, dreaming, escaping, pounding on the walls until his fists were bloody – well, frankly, Two is surprised (and silently very impressed) that he lasted so long.

"If it's not Six, then what is it? You still have not come up with an answer for that, have you? Nothing, after all this time."

Shoulders slumped and aching with fatigue and stress, unexpected tears blur Six's vision. "No," he whispers, so quiet he barely hears himself. Two hears him, however, and that's all that matters.

"Do you still believe you truly belong somewhere else? That what you see in your dreams is real?"

Six won't answer – even now, he won't give Two the satisfaction. He's spent far too long resisting and fighting, refusing to do anything Two wants, even something as simple as answer a question, it's a habit by now to refuse and deny. But he's tired, _so tired_, of fighting _so hard_ all the time. Of struggling and trying to hold on to something that is slipping through his fingers bit by bit. Something he's doubting was ever real in the first place.

The dreams are so faded (he hardly has them anymore), that he's started to truly wonder what he's been fighting for. That once unmoveable certainty that he didn't belong, that feeling of a facts stitched into his soul… it's so distant, so unattainable. He can't remember what that was like. Can't remember why he's fighting anymore.

This scares him deeply – all of it does. If he gives in, gives up, then what was this all for? If he accepts this place as truth, then the world is gone, everything is gone, and he is a number. Some part of him still says _no_, but it's quiet and beaten.

Regardless of the confusion swirling through him, he is so utterly powerless, he can do little else than lean back in his chair and decline to answer.

Two chuckles a bit as if he can guess Six's thoughts, then peers at him, his face carefully arranged to display genuine sympathy.

"How long can you truly keep this up? Do you really have the strength to fight this forever?"

"Do you always have to reply with a question?" Six retorts, but his tone is underwhelming and exhausted, void of the fire he once had.

Still, Two can see that Six's irritating manner, that anger and spark that makes his so _fascinatingly_ different from everyone else, is still there, still glowing – even if it's just barely. The pair sit in silence for quite some time, Two gazing thoughtfully at Six and Six staring ahead without seeing anything at all.

"I think you're ready to go home."

* * *

Six walks into his Village house and looks at the things that are supposed to be his, the objects of a life supposedly lived. He stills feels detached from it, but he feels no more attached to the drawings of the Statue of Liberty that he once clung to like a lifeline. He can't remember why.

He belongs nowhere, to no one. He is beaten, broken.

Maybe he _is_ a number.

He settles down on the couch, hollow, with no energy to question or struggle or bother. There is no point, because surely, this must be all there is. After all this time, nothing makes sense anymore. It must have all been a dream. He must have been crazy after all.

Six turns on _Wonkers_.

* * *

Two flips off the security feed from Six's home. A wide grin creeps across his worn features.

_Finally_.

**-end-**


End file.
